BMW works council calls for its own battery cell production and praises Tesla

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BMW works council calls for its own battery cell production and praises Tesla-calls

“The battery is the heart of the car’s car,” said BMW works council Manfred Schoch in an interview with the manager magazine. Therefore, it is important that the Munich automaker itself supplies this as important component. “Who does not control this centerpiece itself and builds, will not remain competitive,” is his fear.

The BMW Executive Board has so far pronounced its own production of battery cells. Finally, the Munich had closed a delivery contract with the Chinese cell manufacturer Catl, which currently builds a work in Thuringia, not far from the BMW plant in Leipzig. On the Erfurt cross, good one and a half hours of car from the BMW plant, the production of Catl should ideally start 2020.

“We depend on us,” criticized the course of the BMW Executive Board in the interview with the manager magazine. He wishes BMW “people who go into the future with us,” says Schoch. That’s what “and especially for the board.”

As a model, the BMW works council brought the US electric car manufacturer Tesla and its boss Elon Musk: “Our board members should finally deal more intensively with this Lord, which should be long ago bankrupt.”

Tesla has “the electromobility understood”

While many in the car industry assume that Tesla will soon go down because of its partly a precarious situation in terms of finance and delays in production, highlighted shock, which Elon Musk properly power with its electric cars. “They understood the electromobility,” he said, as Tesla as the only Western car manufacturer with significant quantities control the entire value creation process.

The battery cells build Tesla together with cooperation partners Panasonic itself, in the Gigafactory factory in the US state of Nevada. Other gigafactories worldwide are already in planning or. under construction. From BMW’s contracts with Catl, on the other hand, benefit mainly the Chinese cell manufacturers, so Schoch: “We look at, marvel and pay more and higher prices,” he summarizes the dilemma.

Bock thinks that the cell producers like Catl, LG Chem or Samsung currently only produce battery cells, but want to expand production later on the entire battery module, cooling and power electronics. So you lose as a German manufacturer quickly to competitiveness. It is central to the preservation of jobs, already producing the battery cells themselves.

After all, BMW has recently invested 200 million euros in battery cell research. But that is not enough, so shot. “Today we earn a lot of money with our engines; Coming soon we could import this money with batteries, “he said.
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